


Touch Faith

by Stultiloquentia



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, post-HBP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-01
Updated: 2010-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:55:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stultiloquentia/pseuds/Stultiloquentia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At nine p.m. on a Tuesday, the floo at Grimmauld opens with an irritable whuf and vomits Draco Malfoy onto the hearthrug.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

At nine p.m. on a Tuesday, the floo at Grimmauld opens with an irritable whuf and vomits Draco Malfoy onto the hearthrug. His robes are torn and grey with ash. He looks like a cobweb someone scrapped out of the corner of a disused room.

Harry flings his teacup into the air to get to him before his head cracks on the stone hearth.

Malfoy looks up and focuses on Harry with difficulty. "Sanctuary," he rasps.

"Yes," says Harry right away, banking on instinct, but the despair leaves Malfoy's face only when he passes out.

*

He has been cursed, but nobody can label it. Moody checks and rechecks him for triggers and contagions until Harry shoves him out into the hall and barks at him, at which point he reluctantly admits that Draco is not a threat to the house or its inhabitants. The boy is barely conscious when he arrives; food improves him, but it's clearly all he can do to eat without assistance.

Downstairs, the rest of the household argues about ways he could have foiled the _Fidelius_, what, precisely, "sanctuary" means under these circumstances, and what they should do with him even if they do decide to trust him on a very limited and strictly trial basis.

Harry sits on the stairs and thinks of a dark and stormy night in June and an old man who always put his trust in the strangest places.

*

"Let's trust him," says Harry to the Order.

"Why should we?" the Order choruses.

"For the novelty?" Harry suggests dryly.

*

The war has not been going well. It had been, up until the point when Voldemort noticed that he had one horcrux left, and started bombing things.

*

It's Hermione who figures it out. Or rather, Crookshanks, with Hermione working out the details. On day eight, Hermione enters Malfoy's room with a lunch tray and finds her cat standing on Malfoy's bed, staring at the convalescent, who stares back. To Hermione's eye, Malfoy's expression reads, "I cannot believe it has come to this," while Crookshanks' is a very clear, "Suck it up, buttercup." Sparing his mistress only a brief glance, the cat moves in—and on—ignoring Malfoy's stifled winces as he steps balletically onto Malfoy's stomach and thighs, turns thrice, and plops down with a gentle fart. Malfoy stares at his lapful of cat. He looks smaller than she knows he is under blankets and Crookshanks' imposing bulk, and she is startled to see nervousness supersede the bitter lines around his mouth. She hasn't got any words; she shrugs her incomprehension and sets down her tray. After a second, Malfoy shrugs back.

Six hours later, Crookshanks reappears in the drawing room, where people are in the habit of congregating after supper. He stops in front of Hermione and enquires, with mute, catty eloquence, "Well?"

"Oh hello, Crookshanks," Hermione offers. "Did you, um, have a nice cuddle with Malfoy?"

Crookshanks rolls his eyes, butts his soft head very deliberately against Hermione's right wrist, where she has been having trouble with tendonitis, and begins purring like a lorry engine.

Harry, watching from his favourite couch (transfigured by Sirius from hard-backed Victoriana to squashy), imagines he can see his friend's synapses lighting up like a string of firecrackers, one after the other, inevitable. Hermione in problem-solving mode.

"Oh! Oh, wow," she exclaims after no more than a minute, and springs up, library bound.

*

It's a wasting curse. It affects bone and muscle first, causing atrophy, fatigue, and brittleness. It's slow, but unforgiving. Pomfrey gives him six months before he'll be little better than a ghost, and then he will simply fall apart and vanish.

The sole cure, as Crookshanks has deduced, is touch. Touch, to be precise, that is freely offered, with care and affection. And Malfoy, as his tormenter anticipated very well, is surrounded by people to whom he has never been anything but loathsome.

The various ironies are lost on nobody.

*

Malfoy is installed in the drawing room, which has a steady trickle of people passing through on most days.

"Malfoy," acknowledges Granger, meticulously polite, and jerks down to touch his knee on her way to the map trolley.

"Mr. Malfoy," says Lupin with distant kindness, and holds his wrist steady as he hands him his tea.

"Oh, hi," says Harry, on his way out the door, trailing Weasleys. His hand flutters, but all that's visible is one gaunt, eyelash-swept cheek and a fall of soft hair glinting reddish in the firelight. The Weasleys each swat Malfoy upside the head as they go past. Harry swats George upside the head.

*

On the thirteenth day, Harry finds Malfoy bunched up under blankets in the library. They stare at each other for a minute, frowning: two not-quite-adults, one all whipcord brawn and too-bright eyes, the other pained and pinched and pale.

Then: "Harry Potter," says Harry Potter. "Pleased to meet you." He sticks out his hand.

"Oh, for God's sake," Malfoy replies. But he's already pushing the blankets aside, and reaching back.


	2. Light

"The best cure for bone-related curses is sunlight," says Lupin, and Draco supposes he would know, so he hefts his cane and a pillow and hobbles up three flights of stairs to investigate the rooftop.

It isn't much, as wizarding rooftops go, but it's more than Draco expected of a horrible old carapace like 12 Grimmauld. There's a plot of herbs and medicinals, a small, modern greenhouse and a patch of grass. Draco points his wand at the door, strips off all his clothes and lets the mild April breeze pet him to sleep.

He wakes up to the sound of humming and a strange sensation across his thighs.

The sun has shifted to the southwest; its late afternoon beams honey-glaze the grass blades and glasshouse panes, and the back of Harry Potter's neck.

Draco levers himself onto an elbow.

Potter is not humming; that appears to be Neville Longbottom, whom Draco can see just inside the greenhouse, shirtsleeves rolled and hands thrust in potting soil. Potter is propped on the doorframe, waiting for his friend, one thumb hooked in the pocket of his jeans and the other balancing his Firebolt. He looks sweaty and unwashed and competent. Looking at him makes Draco feel vulnerable and irritable.

Draco tilts his gaze down and takes stock of the delicate swath of sun-repellent gauze that's covering him neck to toe, the source of the tickling. It feels nice against his skin, catching on his body hair. Whoever transfigured it thankfully had the sense to leave Draco's clothes alone; they're in the same rumpled heap where he left them, next to his head.

He plucks them up, pulls on shirt and trousers. Balls up the gauze. Longbottom seems to have finished whatever he was doing; he's taking a moment to tidy his workbench and banish the dirt under his fingernails back into the flowerpots, laughing at something Potter said while Draco wasn't paying attention. Draco takes a breath and walks over. Potter notes him coming and pivots on his shoulder, enough to make room for Draco in the doorway. "Um," Draco addresses Neville, assuming it was he who provided the cloth. "Thanks for the..." he gestures with his bundle. "Where should I—"

"Keep it," Neville says. "It was just tomato netting; I've got wads."

"Dinner?" Potter interjects hopefully. "Mrs. Weasley's doing meatloaf; I want to be at the front of the line."

"He wants an end piece," Neville confides to Draco.

Draco can't think of anything to say; he nods.

Neither of them touch him on their way across the lawn, even though Potter could easily have dropped an arm over his shoulders as they turned together, and Longbottom, on his other side, could be walking closer, close enough to bump elbows. Somehow, despite that, Draco feels healthier than he has in weeks.

"Oh! Mrs. Weasley's chives!" Neville exclaims when they're most of the way to the door. He dashes back to his herbs and swiftly pinches off a handful of thin, pungent stalks. He holds them up like a torch on his way back, and includes Draco in his grin.

Next time Draco ascends to the roof, he finds that somebody has installed a pair of stout poles to one side of the grass patch, and strung a hammock between them.


	3. Sound

Draco Malfoy studies the ticking bomb and does sums in his head. He has been a turncoat for five months and two weeks. It has been three months since he diffused a bomb beneath a train station, was found out by his father, and punished with a bone-wasting curse that makes him move like an arthritic old man. It has been eleven weeks and five days since someone whose identity he does not know caught up with him, blasted him with a disorientation spell and pitched him through a floo, into Harry Potter's arms.

The best cures for his curse are sunlight and touch. It has been raining for three weeks and he hasn't seen another human being in four days. It has been six hours since Harry and some other unimportant people snuck up on a cell full of Death Eaters and blew them to pieces, assuming everything went well.

Draco's bomb is set to go off in eight minutes. His fingers move delicately over wires and pins while his thoughts skim lightly over numbers and figures and do not sink into the possibility that things did not go well. He will know soon enough. Five months ago he would have been the first to know; he would have been there. He would have made things go well.

The door bangs open downstairs and there's a clatter of voices quickly shushed. It is after midnight and Draco's work light won't be visible from outside. Draco snips another strand of copper and listens to the minute creaks of an old house welcoming its people home. There's the rattle of a hat stand, a murmured instruction, and a swift, approaching tap-tapping: someone taking the stairs two at a time but trying to do it quietly.

Draco touches his wand to his lamp, brightening the glow just enough to spill into the hallway.

Harry knocks lightly on the door and enters at Draco's, "Come."

"Hey. Up late."

"On a roll," says Draco, not looking up from his task. "Success?"

"No captures, but we destroyed their bunker and a whole hell of a lot of explosives. Guess I'm calling that a win." Harry's voice is weary. He slouches over to Draco's table and props himself within reach.

"No one was there?"

A grunt. "Surprised each other in transit. Bit of a brawl in the garden. Caught the edge of a _Sectumsempra_."

Draco turns at that, brightening his lamp a little more so he can rake eyes over Harry's frame. Harry picks at his jumper, indicating the spot. There's a gash in the wool, the yarn ends willy-nillying outward like the fronds of a sea anemone. Beneath it, there's a touch of crimson on Molly's knitting.

"I'm fine," Harry assures him. "It bled a bit on the ride home, but it's not deep." But then he admits, "Bit...bit too close of a call, really." Draco tries not to show his surprise that Harry would admit such a thing, and to him.

"Could have used you out there. Always were a quick draw," Harry mutters.

Again, Draco doesn't know what to say. There's no way for Harry to know what he's like in actual combat, except, he supposes wryly, when he's fighting Harry himself. "Got enough curses for the present, thanks," he settles on.

"So you do. How're you feeling?"

"Fine. Bit like the family pet, until the rest of the Ginger Mob went away."

Draco's been showing Bill and Fleur how to study the peculiar types of bomb Voldemort favours. They work because they're almost entirely mechanical: most wizards don't even understand what they're looking at until too late. After the first time his instructions led to a successful dismantlement in the field, Weasley contributions to the "Pat Malfoy" campaign shifted from swats on the head to complacent (if somewhat vigorous) hair-rufflings.

Harry gestures toward Draco's shoulders. "Want me to..."

"Hands first, please."

"Been tinkering with explosives all week, have you?"

"Best use for me, if I'm housebound."

"Give," says Harry, and Draco gives his inflamed right hand into Harry's two lean ones and sighs as Harry begins gently massaging the joints.

Draco closes his eyes and says, "Let me look at your ribs and I'll let you give me a backrub."

"Ooh, who could resist that deal?"

Draco doesn't bother replying. There's silence for a moment. The bomb on the table starts ticking audibly, making both of them jump. "Oops," says Draco, and pulls his hand out of Harry's. "Missed my window." He reaches over and pokes his wand into the mechanism's innards. The ticking subsides.

"You know what—let me go shower," says Harry. "Then I can fondle you in good conscience. Meet me in the kitchen in ten?"

Draco snorts softly and hopes his ears aren't changing colour. "Actually," he hedges, "I was planning to go to bed soon."

"Come on. Ten, no, five minutes, and then give me fifteen to work on you. You'll sleep better."

"Fine," says Draco. Harry clasps his shoulder on the way out the door.

Draco goes downstairs and puts the kettle on, measuring tea by hand and taking milk from the fridge. There's a pot of shepherd's pie in front. He hesitates, then fetches a plate and serving spoon while the water boils.

It's been nine weeks and change since Harry began his weird, awkward quest to...solve Draco's problem. Knocking knees with him when they sit next to each other in meetings or at breakfast. Touching his elbow to get his attention. Setting hands on his damned shoulders. It's not like it's special; he bangs up next to Weasley in exactly the same way, pushes shoulders with Granger when they're staring at a map together. But it's not a big circle, the People Who Get Close to Potter. Draco's noticed that much. It's profoundly...there are words he shies away from...it is profoundly disconcerting, to find himself a member, mad (maddening) circumstances or no.

Draco doesn't understand it. At first, he'd born the lot of them with bitter cynicism. Harry fancied himself a hero, so of course Harry would stoop to cure Draco of his curse. Draco had thought him stupid. Thought Harry didn't actually understand the key point that the affection bestowed had to be genuine. But Harry was stubborn, which he should have known, and Harry was apparently capable of playing a longer game than Draco had given him credit for.

It's been nine weeks since that ludicrous, overdetermined handshake.

Harry trots down in a bathrobe just as Draco's pouring, spots the food and looks at Draco like he's accomplished something stupendous. Draco's seen that wide smile a few times over the years, at a distance, directed elsewhere. It knocks him a bit sideways to see it straight on. He waylays him before he can sit down, though, and gestures at his middle. Dutifully, Harry parts the robe enough for Draco to cast a quick antiseptic charm—"_Ow_, I just did that!"—and knit the skin just enough to keep Harry in and infection out.

Harry sits, forks up potatoes with one hand and matter-of-factly extends the other, palm up. Draco's hand is already damp from wrapping it around his too-hot tea. Frankly, he'd rather keep it there. But he sits across from Harry and reaches to cover Harry's palm with his. And they sit, just resting, not gripping, while Harry chews and Draco sips, and Harry fills him in on the rest of the week's adventures.

Too soon, the food's gone, and the tea drunk, and there are no more distractions, and Draco needs to be out of this warm, low-lit kitchen and into his own big, empty bed with its cool sheets with an acuity he can't explain. He taps Harry's hand. "Thank you. That's better." He rises and sends the dishes into the sink. "I'm going to—I really need to go to sleep, now."

Harry watches him with serious, dark eyes. "Yeah. Me, too." His lashes drop, shadowing his cheeks. "Thanks for letting me wind down, though."

"Yeah. See you."

"I'll be around, tomorrow at least."

"'Night, Potter."

It's been thirty minutes, since.


End file.
